Drinking water aquifers contained some Marcellus-like salty water pre-fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing—fracking—for natural gas has revolutionized the energy industry in many places, including the United States. The pushback over contamination concerns has been a prevailing storyline in the public eye. This possibility has been viewed as unlikely, though, as the shale gas layers being fracked are typically several thousand feet deeper than any aquifers used for drinking water. Fractures would have to propagate tremendous distances, through a number of confining layers, to create a pathway for contamination.

The physics required to make something like that happen just aren’t there. In nature, however, it’s usually true that to consider something to be impossible is to be disappointed. And so the nagging question remained: what if there are already some pathways present through those confining layers?

In 2011, researchers from Duke University published results (open access) showing a correlation between methane concentrations in private water wells and proximity to local natural gas production wells in parts of Pennsylvania and New York. While that suggested the water well contamination could be related to recent fracking, it was not at all a sure thing. The work was controversial, too—triggering a string of comments and replies in the journal that published it.

To learn more, the research group returned to northeast Pennsylvania with a different question—would they find evidence of water from the Marcellus Shale in drinking water wells? If the Marcellus, which is a couple thousand feet down, is really perfectly isolated from shallower groundwater, the answer should be no.

However, there were good reasons to think it might not. Any visitor to Pennsylvania’s Salt Springs State Park, if they understood what they were looking at, could tell you that. As you might guess from its name, natural springs of salty water bubble to the surface in that park. That might come as a surprise to those geographically in tune with Pennsylvania’s safe distance from the ocean. In the deep history of the Keystone State’s rocks, however, one can read maritime stories.

Nearly 400 million years ago, the sediment and organic matter that would become the Marcellus Shale and its natural gas was collecting on the seafloor just offshore from the Acadian Mountains, one of the mighty predecessors to the Appalachians. As those sediments sank deep into the Earth under the ever-increasing weight of new material deposited above, they took the seawater that permeated them along for the ride. In addition, older salt layers (formed by evaporating seawater) provided plenty of brine to this deep sedimentary basin.

In the course of those nearly 400 million years, the Marcellus Shale suffered the usual geologic torture of life near a plate boundary. At one point, the collision of the North American plate with Africa drove up the Appalachians (since subdued by erosion), warping the surrounding rocks and creating regularly spaced cracks. It’s those little cracks that are exploited by hydraulic fracturing techniques, which extend them and prop them open with sand grains. In places, the characteristics of the rock and the cracks running through it can conspire to create continuous pathways—little fluid highways through otherwise impenetrable layers of rock.

So, drill down deep enough in this area, and the clean groundwater will turn to brine. If you find salty water near the surface, however, you’re probably looking at a leak from the deeper layers. If that deeper layer is the Marcellus, it raises the possibility that fluids injected during fracking could potentially find their way into drinking water aquifers.

Over 400 samples from drinking water wells were analyzed, some recent and some from before the time when energy companies began lining up to frack Pennsylvanian rocks. For comparison, over 80 samples of deep sedimentary brine were analyzed as well. The water samples were chemically fingerprinted, using bromine, chloride, sodium, barium, strontium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, sulfate, carbonate, and isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen, strontium, and radium.

The researchers found that more than 10 percent of the drinking water samples contained the fingerprint of diluted brine. And the isotopic strontium and radium signatures matched Marcellus brines more closely than brines found in other deep layers.

So is that evidence for fracking contamination? Probably not. There was no significant difference between the pre- and post-fracking water sampling, meaning that there are likely natural areas of mixing—subdued versions of Salt Springs State Park. There was no correlation with proximity to natural gas production wells, either.

However, when the researchers compared this data to their methane sampling, they found that almost all the methane detections that came more than one kilometer away from natural gas wells occurred in water wells with a brine signature. That hints that the methane in those wells is very likely natural.

Near natural gas wells, however, methane detections were not tied to any one water type, leaving open the possibility of a connection to natural gas production.

Regardless, the researchers believe that what they’ve learned is important. They write, “the coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater with a geochemical signature similar to produced water from the Marcellus Formation suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations.”

The effect could be minor—figuring that out will take a lot more work. However, the Las Vegas assumption that what gets injected in the Marcellus stays in the Marcellus—at least in northeast Pennsylvania—appears not entirely valid.

32 Reader Comments

While the general public is concerned with fracking disrupting water tables, there is a greater issue at hand, the liquids used in fracking.

Fracking solutions are proprietary to each company; generally they're a mixture of fluids that draw oil out from cracks and ingredients that aid in compressibility so that the fracking fluid can be propagated deeper into fractures for more efficient oil transfer and pumping. This results in a mix of everything from toluenes and benzenes to unrefined diesel being pumped into, and then out of these wells. The greater concern isn't the cracks caused by fracking, but the proper care and disposal, as well as spill prevention, for used fracking fluid.

These are heinous industrial pollutants when combined, and while the EPA and the Ministry of Environment in Canada do their best, the scale of the problem is massive. As an example, if we were to shut down one oil well a day in Alberta alone, it would take 176 years to close them all down (The average shutdown process for a pumping site takes up to two weeks, IIRC). If each of these places is using fracking fluid and lets a litre a day escape, or improperly stores/decontaminates the waste... You can see where this is going. It behooves us to engender a viewpoint more tolerant of the entire picture, as opposed to the latest technology. Planning for higher oil prices will help us keep them down in the long run.

While the general public is concerned with fracking disrupting water tables, there is a greater issue at hand, the liquids used in fracking.

Fracking solutions are proprietary to each company; generally they're a mixture of fluids that draw oil out from cracks and ingredients that aid in compressibility so that the fracking fluid can be propagated deeper into fractures for more efficient oil transfer and pumping. This results in a mix of everything from toluenes and benzenes to unrefined diesel being pumped into, and then out of these wells. The greater concern isn't the cracks caused by fracking, but the proper care and disposal, as well as spill prevention, for used fracking fluid.

These are heinous industrial pollutants when combined, and while the EPA and the Ministry of Environment in Canada do their best, the scale of the problem is massive. As an example, if we were to shut down one oil well a day in Alberta alone, it would take 176 years to close them all down (The average shutdown process for a pumping site takes up to two weeks, IIRC). If each of these places is using fracking fluid and lets a litre a day escape, or improperly stores/decontaminates the waste... You can see where this is going. It behooves us to engender a viewpoint more tolerant of the entire picture, as opposed to the latest technology. Planning for higher oil prices will help us keep them down in the long run.

This needs to keep getting repeated. There's a lot of very loud complaints about fracking, and a lot of them are based either on misunderstandings or conjecture that is not shown by the data. When properly handled fracking appears to be reasonably safe, but the concern about proper handling of contaminants is most important and I fear that it will get dismissed as a fallacious argument made by the "anti-fracking crowd".

I'm a geotechnical engineer from the south and was once sent to Pennsylvania to monitor some drilling (unrelated to fracking, it was an exploratory investigation for a warehouse foundation system). I was talking to the local drillers and other people and was blown away by the fracking boom. It's a bit of an issue over in Arkansas, but I had difficulty grasping just how quickly things are happening in Pennsylvania. The number of rigs has exploded with hundreds upon hundreds of new crews coming to the area every year in a 21st century gold rush.

On the one hand it's nice to have cheap natural gas and the drill crews temporarily stimulate a lot of small town economies for a while. However, the destruction of the environment to get these crews set up (such as new roads built for this sole purpose and won't be needed in a few years) is staggering. One of the engineers from the area was telling me stories about how many elderly people were basically tricked and signed away their mineral rights on their property for peanuts, and most don't receive compensation for damages to the property. Pollution is merely one aspect.

While the general public is concerned with fracking disrupting water tables, there is a greater issue at hand, the liquids used in fracking.

Fracking solutions are proprietary to each company; generally they're a mixture of fluids that draw oil out from cracks and ingredients that aid in compressibility so that the fracking fluid can be propagated deeper into fractures for more efficient oil transfer and pumping. This results in a mix of everything from toluenes and benzenes to unrefined diesel being pumped into, and then out of these wells. The greater concern isn't the cracks caused by fracking, but the proper care and disposal, as well as spill prevention, for used fracking fluid.

These are heinous industrial pollutants when combined, and while the EPA and the Ministry of Environment in Canada do their best, the scale of the problem is massive. As an example, if we were to shut down one oil well a day in Alberta alone, it would take 176 years to close them all down (The average shutdown process for a pumping site takes up to two weeks, IIRC). If each of these places is using fracking fluid and lets a litre a day escape, or improperly stores/decontaminates the waste... You can see where this is going. It behooves us to engender a viewpoint more tolerant of the entire picture, as opposed to the latest technology. Planning for higher oil prices will help us keep them down in the long run.

This is a good point. So the issue is one of enforcement rather than more regulation. All of the scary accidents that people use to argue against fracking were violations of existing regulations. Mining more natural gas in the states is a good thing, its cleaner burning than coal or petrol, and truthfully practicing a transition to a difference fuel source for cars should make future transitions easier (ie to hydrogen, pure electric etc).

wow,what a waste of time,this article is nothing but a question that lead back to nothing but another question

It's how science works. You ask questions, which usually give you information that leads to more questions. In this case, they showed a very real possibility that there are natural pathways from the deep shale layers to the surface ground water layers.

While the general public is concerned with fracking disrupting water tables, there is a greater issue at hand, the liquids used in fracking.

Fracking solutions are proprietary to each company; generally they're a mixture of fluids that draw oil out from cracks and ingredients that aid in compressibility so that the fracking fluid can be propagated deeper into fractures for more efficient oil transfer and pumping. This results in a mix of everything from toluenes and benzenes to unrefined diesel being pumped into, and then out of these wells. The greater concern isn't the cracks caused by fracking, but the proper care and disposal, as well as spill prevention, for used fracking fluid.

These are heinous industrial pollutants when combined, and while the EPA and the Ministry of Environment in Canada do their best, the scale of the problem is massive. As an example, if we were to shut down one oil well a day in Alberta alone, it would take 176 years to close them all down (The average shutdown process for a pumping site takes up to two weeks, IIRC). If each of these places is using fracking fluid and lets a litre a day escape, or improperly stores/decontaminates the waste... You can see where this is going. It behooves us to engender a viewpoint more tolerant of the entire picture, as opposed to the latest technology. Planning for higher oil prices will help us keep them down in the long run.

This is a good point. So the issue is one of enforcement rather than more regulation. All of the scary accidents that people use to argue against fracking were violations of existing regulations. Mining more natural gas in the states is a good thing, its cleaner burning than coal or petrol, and truthfully practicing a transition to a difference fuel source for cars should make future transitions easier (ie to hydrogen, pure electric etc).

Part of the problem with regulation (politics aside) is it's hard to keep up with something that is relatively new, but already very popular.

The bigger issue, is the use of diesel and illegal agents in the fracking solution. EPA is in a position where they can't properly regulate these "proprietary solutions". Hopefully a solution can be found that will allow for a semi-clean extraction, because I would much rather burn natural gas than coal.

wow,what a waste of time,this article is nothing but a question that lead back to nothing but another question

Science is like that. The majority of studies just answer a couple of points, but those points raise more questions in turn. This one answered several key questions.1: Can deep water mix with shallow groundwater? Yes.2: Does this occur naturally? Yes.3: Has this occurred due to fracking? Yes. More likely the closer you get to a well site, less likely beyond 1000 meters.

#1 is a major win for fracking opponents. They've now got significant data showing the "too deep to mix" premise is utterly false. #2 shows that it's not completely the fault of the gassers.#3 shows that they do carry some responsibility at least nearby. what it raises is the possibility that long term extraction from a given well may spread that contamination even further beyond the current 1 km fall off.

Further, this study uses different analysis to confirm and refine what the Duke study already indicated.

The bigger issue, is the use of diesel and illegal agents in the fracking solution. EPA is in a position where they can't properly regulate these "proprietary solutions". Hopefully a solution can be found that will allow for a semi-clean extraction, because I would much rather burn natural gas than coal.

There's a little more to it - Any number of organizations use contracted rig lifecycle servicing companies, often contracting out a company to develop, deploy and then close a number of drilling sites. The primary determinant in dealing with rig lifecycle companies is worker safety (They're not going to contract out to companies that perform below a certain standard) as opposed to ecological stability. Any number of large refining and sale organizations (Exxon, Suncor, etc) won't have in-house facilities to test, develop and deploy their own fracking fluids and methodologies, so they contract that out to these rig lifecycle folks, which justifiably takes control out of their hands. There are a lot of very good people who work in the rig servicing industry, but fracking fluid is dirty, period, and until the technology matures, we're not going to see an upward pressure on sustainability throughout the rig lifecycle. It shocks most people I know when I point out that after a well is done, companies pump out what they can, and leave a concrete sleeve in the borehole so that the rest hopefully doesn't leak out, sealing off the top afterwards. That, in Canada, is considered legally adequate.

I remember seeing videos of people burning their water in Pennsylvania from the 80's. We should be all up in arms about evil mother nature!! Fracking should be regulated and used with best practices.

The history of industrial pollution in Pennsylvania is a long one. I doubt that the water was naturally flammable.

Actually water is naturally flammable in many places. The most common cause is due to methane. Wherever you find large concentrations of natural gas, you tend to also find large quantities of naturally occuring methane. This is where the Duke University study was so highly critizied. Correlation does not imply causation. Basically you would expect methane near wells because the whole reason they put the well there is the same reason the methane is there.

The fact is many of these locations had methane contamination issues long before the mining companies came to town.

The big issue is the same thing the first poster mentioned. Improper handling of used fracking fluid that is usually stored at surface level. Spills are common and they do FAR more damage at ground level than 2000ft under.

You might think of thermogenic methane as a "harbinger" or precurser to all the contaminants that may migrate (upward or outward) over the years. The gas industry wants us to think that the geologic layers are impermeable, and that a "cement" casing is impermeable and permanent. Notice they do not refer to the casings as "concrete." (Think bentonite mixed with industrial waste (anything from walnut shells to deisel fuel)). Bradford and Tioga counties in PA are now experiencing "geysers" of methane, and cases of "lost circulation" of drilling mud (which surfaces in creeks, in the formerly pristine wilderness, and on people's farms). That the gas industry has run roughshod through PA is already established. Read the "Drilling Down" series in the NYT by Ian Urbina. Take Chesapeake Energy as an example of the worst players in PA, and you will begin to understand that the whole thing is a pyramid scheme as the expense of the locals (and local governments).

wow,what a waste of time,this article is nothing but a question that lead back to nothing but another question

Science is like that. The majority of studies just answer a couple of points, but those points raise more questions in turn. This one answered several key questions.1: Can deep water mix with shallow groundwater? Yes.2: Does this occur naturally? Yes.3: Has this occurred due to fracking? Yes. More likely the closer you get to a well site, less likely beyond 1000 meters.

#1 is a major win for fracking opponents. They've now got significant data showing the "too deep to mix" premise is utterly false. #2 shows that it's not completely the fault of the gassers.#3 shows that they do carry some responsibility at least nearby. what it raises is the possibility that long term extraction from a given well may spread that contamination even further beyond the current 1 km fall off.

Further, this study uses different analysis to confirm and refine what the Duke study already indicated.

I think your #3 is a stretch. It's possible that the methane near the wells is the result of natural gas production (whether from the formation or the casing), but we certainly don't know that for sure.

If people followed best practices, things like Deep Water Horizon accident wouldn't have occured.

I am sure it'll all be fine...until it isn't. I wonder what major city will be condemned as unhabitable, once the aquafer it relies upon becomes contaminated, first. Especially from the article, it seems like some of this stuff could take years to turn up in an aquafer if it finds a "slow route" to get in.

Behind the implementation of every scientific breakthrough of mankind is a fracking mess of pollution and greed. They go hand in hand. Either we live in caves, or we have technology.

The best option is to pursue the technology, but to do so wisely and clean up anything we didn't realize was going to be a mess. I think most of the time, regulation punishes the good guys, we need to have laws that punish the bad guys who rape the land out of greed, but do not hamper the companies who are doing a good job of keeping their operations as clean and safe as current information allows.

I hate to pick nits, but that's a *drill* rig. Fracking is done with much smaller completion rigs and an army of pumper trucks.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the gas they detected along with the brine. There are a fairly large number of gas-bearing zones above (and below) the Marcellus, so it takes some work to find out which one the gas is coming from.

...not that having methane in your aquifer is a good thing, but from my water testing days I can tell you that there was quite a lot of gas in the pre-drill tests we performed in some areas, and most of the gas was coming from very shallow, biogenic sources. The few times it wasn't we'd generally find an old, forgotten and poorly abandoned shallow well somewhere near the property.

To be completely honest, I'd have to say that these old wells should be more of a concern than fracking is, since each one is a conduit between everything from surface to TD. Most of them don't leak, but the ones that do can be incredibly difficult to diagnose and fix. The only good news is that cementing is easier to understand than fracture propagation, so it should be a heck of a lot easier to regulate effectively (PA: set a gold standard and the world will follow).

I remember seeing videos of people burning their water in Pennsylvania from the 80's. We should be all up in arms about evil mother nature!! Fracking should be regulated and used with best practices.

The history of industrial pollution in Pennsylvania is a long one. I doubt that the water was naturally flammable.

Actually water is naturally flammable in many places. The most common cause is due to methane. Wherever you find large concentrations of natural gas, you tend to also find large quantities of naturally occuring methane. This is where the Duke University study was so highly critizied. Correlation does not imply causation. Basically you would expect methane near wells because the whole reason they put the well there is the same reason the methane is there.

The fact is many of these locations had methane contamination issues long before the mining companies came to town.

The big issue is the same thing the first poster mentioned. Improper handling of used fracking fluid that is usually stored at surface level. Spills are common and they do FAR more damage at ground level than 2000ft under.

That's a bit of a Texas-sharp-shooter way of looking at it. The shale gas is laterally continuous under the region- I think the rigs pretty much drill where they can drill. I'm not aware of a geological reason to expect more natural methane seepage 0.5 km from a production well than 3 km from a production well.

As far as correlation/causation, take another look at the Duke methane study and see if you think you've characterized it accurately.

There isn't any historical (pre-fracking) methane data for the area, unfortunately.

I hate to pick nits, but that's a *drill* rig. Fracking is done with much smaller completion rigs and an army of pumper trucks.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the gas they detected along with the brine. There are a fairly large number of gas-bearing zones above (and below) the Marcellus, so it takes some work to find out which one the gas is coming from.

...not that having methane in your aquifer is a good thing, but from my water testing days I can tell you that there was quite a lot of gas in the pre-drill tests we performed in some areas, and most of the gas was coming from very shallow, biogenic sources. The few times it wasn't we'd generally find an old, forgotten and poorly abandoned shallow well somewhere near the property.

To be completely honest, I'd have to say that these old wells should be more of a concern than fracking is, since each one is a conduit between everything from surface to TD. Most of them don't leak, but the ones that do can be incredibly difficult to diagnose and fix. The only good news is that cementing is easier to understand than fracture propagation, so it should be a heck of a lot easier to regulate effectively (PA: set a gold standard and the world will follow).

If you take a look at the methane paper (linked in para 3) you can see the methane data- it was thermogenic, not biogenic. I don't think they're able to fingerprint the source layer, though.

Are there gas-bearing layers above the Marcellus in that area (NE PA)? In the Mahantango maybe?

If you take a look at the methane paper (linked in para 3) you can see the methane data- it was thermogenic, not biogenic. I don't think they're able to fingerprint the source layer, though.

Are there gas-bearing layers above the Marcellus in that area (NE PA)? In the Mahantango maybe?

Sorry Scott - I didn't even read the linked paper. It's an issue that consumed quite a lot of my life a few years ago, so I was running on memory.

As for the stratigraphy, I can think of a few zones off the top of my head. There are several black shales just above the Marcellus in the middle and upper Devonian which people have been taking a look at recently, along with more conventional targets in the upper Devonian and Mississippian sands which were heavily drilled in the past. There has also been production out of Pennsylvanian sands, although we're moving into the major PA coals at that point.

If you take a look at the methane paper (linked in para 3) you can see the methane data- it was thermogenic, not biogenic. I don't think they're able to fingerprint the source layer, though.

Are there gas-bearing layers above the Marcellus in that area (NE PA)? In the Mahantango maybe?

Sorry Scott - I didn't even read the linked paper. It's an issue that consumed quite a lot of my life a few years ago, so I was running on memory.

As for the stratigraphy, I can think of a few zones off the top of my head. There are several black shales just above the Marcellus in the middle and upper Devonian which people have been taking a look at recently, along with more conventional targets in the upper Devonian and Mississippian sands which were heavily drilled in the past. There has also been production out of Pennsylvanian sands, although we're moving into the major PA coals at that point.

Any of you people who think this is a good idea need to come to PA and live. My parents had a well punched less than a thousand yards behind their house. They promptly sold it and moved. So what do you think the value of a house is if the well water it uses isn't drinkable anymore? People from outside the state don't seem to realize the amount of water that flows over and under the land in PA. A large portion of the population get their drinking water from wells. There are also a large number of natural springs across the state. Considering the number of gas wells in the state and the law of averages, how long do you think its going to be before a major water source is contaminated?

I hate to pick nits, but that's a *drill* rig. Fracking is done with much smaller completion rigs and an army of pumper trucks.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the gas they detected along with the brine. There are a fairly large number of gas-bearing zones above (and below) the Marcellus, so it takes some work to find out which one the gas is coming from.

Are there gas-bearing layers above the Marcellus in that area (NE PA)? In the Mahantango maybe?

Yeah. This has long been the "official" explanation of the industry for any leaked methane anyone finds, in water or otherwise: that it's coming from higher layers and is completely unrelated to their Marcellus methane. I heard a talk explaining things this way about two years ago.

Yeah. This has long been the "official" explanation of the industry for any leaked methane anyone finds, in water or otherwise: that it's coming from higher layers and is completely unrelated to their Marcellus methane. I heard a talk explaining things this way about two years ago.

My experiences don't the truth make, but that explanation fits every case I saw while I was down there. A bad cement job, for example, will cause gas to migrate up the wellbore and either vent to surface or into a shallower aquifer, both of which suck. The gas can be 'fingerprinted' through a variety of techniques, though, so it give clues as to where it came from and ultimately where the problem was.

It's not that we didn't find Marcellus gas in places it shouldn't have been...but the few times we did, there was a suspect wellbore close by.

Any of you people who think this is a good idea need to come to PA and live. My parents had a well punched less than a thousand yards behind their house. They promptly sold it and moved. So what do you think the value of a house is if the well water it uses isn't drinkable anymore? People from outside the state don't seem to realize the amount of water that flows over and under the land in PA. A large portion of the population get their drinking water from wells. There are also a large number of natural springs across the state. Considering the number of gas wells in the state and the law of averages, how long do you think its going to be before a major water source is contaminated?

I live in PA and think it's great! Plenty of jobs for the area, and a better economy for a state that has been hemorraging population. Of course, I live in western PA, however, my city seems to have recovered quite nicely from the black haze that enveloped it in the years directly preceeding my birth.

I few points1. The knowledge about this water is not new. 2. In 2009, during an evaluation of water quality data in a non-productive region of the Marcellus Shale - the data suggested that about 5 %+ of private wells showed a saline water finger print. Again- these are all wells that are drilled into the Catskill Formation not the Marcellus. Primary reason- the wells are too deep. Also the lower portions of the Catskill Formation - produces gas from some interbedded shales and other organic deposits.3. Some wells located in valley structures showed the similiar results - reason wells too deep and saline water naturally closer to the surface.4. Because of these findings and that other data that suggested that prior to Marcellus Shale that up to 50% of private wells could be producing water that was not drinkable - we started the Citizens Groundwater and Surfacewater Database - A way that Citizens Can Contribute and Help to Track Change. The work is unfunded by anyone.5. The wells in these zones are the critical areas to monitor, but I would add that if the wells were not drilled in these area and allowed to faciliate the upward movement of the brine the problem may not be present. 6. Therefore, the location and depth of the private well is part of the problem and may be helping to create a short circuit. 7. There report is very informative - would be nice if they released the raw data.Just some factsFree Information on Drinking Water Quality - http://www.water-research.net

I few points1. The knowledge about this water is not new. 2. In 2009, during an evaluation of water quality data in a non-productive region of the Marcellus Shale - the data suggested that about 5 %+ of private wells showed a saline water finger print. Again- these are all wells that are drilled into the Catskill Formation not the Marcellus. Primary reason- the wells are too deep. Also the lower portions of the Catskill Formation - produces gas from some interbedded shales and other organic deposits.3. Some wells located in valley structures showed the similiar results - reason wells too deep and saline water naturally closer to the surface.4. Because of these findings and that other data that suggested that prior to Marcellus Shale that up to 50% of private wells could be producing water that was not drinkable - we started the Citizens Groundwater and Surfacewater Database - A way that Citizens Can Contribute and Help to Track Change. The work is unfunded by anyone.5. The wells in these zones are the critical areas to monitor, but I would add that if the wells were not drilled in these area and allowed to faciliate the upward movement of the brine the problem may not be present. 6. Therefore, the location and depth of the private well is part of the problem and may be helping to create a short circuit. 7. There report is very informative - would be nice if they released the raw data.Just some factsFree Information on Drinking Water Quality - http://www.water-research.net

Another point that needs to be made is that the well linings are guaranteed to leak in the coming years. According to this video the hole casing INITIAL failure rate is 6-7%:http://vimeo.com/44367635It gets worse from there, of course, as the concrete linings age.

What this means is that whatever is "down there" has a nice path to "up here" and the water table for the foreseeable future - all whatever eons of it.

Oil execs. Hard to see how they could let this beautiful place become a despoiled rat pit...is our species really that messed up? So far it seems like it.